Photographing Penguins

Page 1 of 4

This week at Mawson: 12 August 2011

On station like anywhere else in the world as the working week progresses your mind tends to flit to what you will be doing on the weekend. At this time of year the penguins out at Auster are hatching and therefore if you are going to make a trip off station, this is the place to go. So that’s exactly what a few of us did.

Lisa, Ian, Cotty and I set off shortly after lunch on Friday on Quads for Auster. As we made our way there, sadly, the wind started picking up, the light began to fail, and we encountered a few patches of heavily snowed sastrugi. Opinions from the group on this challenge varied between: a lot of fun; adrenaline pumping; and exactly what you don’t want on a Friday after a hard week. Anyways after travelling the 50 km or so to the huts we could settle in for the night and have a fantastic re-heated meal of veal chops to start and then spag bol for main, all pre-prepared by our resident Master Chef, Scotty.

We set off early next morning to the rookery. It is a particularly great time to visit at the moment, as the lady penguins have largely returned from the ice edge, the chicks have just hatched, and when we were there it wasn’t particularly cold so there was a large amount of activity. So here are a few pics to give you a taste of what you could be doing on the weekend if you made a trip down to Mawson.